It was a testament to the sheer strength of the survival instinct that more people didn’t eat a bullet for breakfast.

She said, “Hopefully you’ll like it more than he did.”

“Oh, he liked it well enough.” Morgan pulled away and smiled, smoothing a stray hair away from Lu’s forehead with a motherly touch. “He stabbed the last poor bastard who tried to hug him, so barking and running away with his tail between his legs is a big improvement.”

“Stabbed?” Lu repeated, incredulous. Even to someone with a lifelong no-touching policy, that seemed a little much.

Morgan’s smile turned wry. “He isn’t exactly what you’d call touchy-feely.”

No kidding.

Lu took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry I said I’d kill you. I mean I guess I would have, but . . . now that I know you’re my godmother, it seems a little . . . aggressive.”

Morgan waved it off, saying, “Oh, pet, if I had fivepence for every time someone’s threatened my life, I’d be a bloody billionaire.”

Pence: another unknown word. Were they like credits? Uncomfortable, Lu shifted her weight from foot to foot. She’d never felt stupid before, but coming up against the obvious limitations of her knowledge made her feel exactly that.

Examining her expression, Morgan said softly, “There’s a lot of people who are really eager to meet you. But there’s no rush; you can stay here and rest for as long as you like, get your bearings. Get cleaned up, have a bath. I’ll send some fresh clothes and food in—”

“No,” said Lu abruptly, filled with an eagerness and hope she hadn’t felt in years. “I want to meet everyone. I want to know everything. I want to do it now.”

Morgan’s face did that softening thing again. She shook her head, swallowing. “Well, then,” she said, her voice catching, a little tremble in her lower lip, “onward and upward!”

And she took Lu by the arm and led her out of the room.

Across the vast, echoing space that comprised the main cavern of the caves the last surviving Ikati called their home, Magnus watched as Morgan led her new charge from the chamber she’d awoken in toward the low passageway that connected the private living areas to the community and meeting areas.

He’d lingered in the shadows of a massive flowstone formation after he’d left her room, hoping to catch his breath before heading to the Assembly. But try as he might he couldn’t get his heart to stop drumming against his ribs, or ease the trembling in his hands. Every inhalation was a ragged echo in the darkness.

She’d wrecked him. She’d left him totally undone, and all it had taken was the momentary press of her fully clothed body against his.

He flexed his hands open and leaned against the cool stone, hanging his head, closing his eyes against the memory of her face just before she’d whispered his name. Relief had shone in her eyes, huge and real and so sweet it stunned him.

No one looked at him like that. Ever. Hardly anyone but a few of the Assembly dared to even look him straight in the eye.

Not that he blamed them. His temper was as ugly as his face. As ugly as the memory of the things that made him unable to bear the touch of another living being.

But if he was being totally honest with himself, he’d have to admit what had really done him in was the absence of something. Something he would’ve recognized from his fevered dreams, dreams that had taunted him and tempted him and driven him to night-sweat agony for years.

Dreams that had fueled an obsession, in which a golden-haired temptress was always the star.

Desire.

Hope, siren of his dreams, looked at him with eyes so burning with desire he could hardly breathe. They were so real, those dreams, so lucid and tantalizing he always awoke with a groan, the sheets drenched, his hand sticky with his seed, his body still shuddering from his release.

Lumina Bohn looked at him the way a homeless animal looks at someone who’s just given it a bed and a snack, and withheld an expected kick: with gratitude.

“Can’t blame her either,” he whispered to no one and nothing, eyes squeezed shut in the dark. In fact it was he who should be grateful to her for deigning to look upon him at all. If his face made him sick to his stomach, it had to be a thousand times worse for someone used to gazing at only perfection in the mirror.

Magnus shoved away from the wall and stood still for a moment in the dark. Then, determined there would be no more slips of control, he squared his shoulders, turned, and followed the faint, familiar and oh-so-torturous scent of his own personal demon through the twisting stone corridors of the caves that he called home.

“Before the Flash this place was a national park,” Morgan explained, seeing Lu’s questioning glances at the rusted iron handrails that lined the pathway on which they walked. There were railings like it bolted to many of the tunnel walls that branched off into darkness, and other evidence the caves and passageways weren’t merely the work of nature came in the form of stairways carved into stone, old electrical lines strung with cobwebs that snaked between dark bulbs, main corridors that were paved, and the occasional crumbling bit of scaffolding. The ancient scent of humans still lingered here, too, and a spike of pain shot through Lu’s stomach.

Father.

She swallowed, blinking away tears, forcing her voice to sound normal. “How well protected are you here? Is there a nearby town? Can you be sure it’s safe?”

Morgan made a noise that was both proud and somehow sad. “Nothing can get at us here. The old entrance is now underwater, and we blocked all other access except a small portal that was never mapped by them.”

Them equaled humans. It was the first time in her life Lu had been on the other side of that slightly derogatory pronoun.

“As for nearby settlements, well, pretty much the entire United Kingdom is a ghost town. The British government refused to cooperate with the Phoenix Corporation when it began taking everything over—Queen Elizabeth never did fancy Americans, you know—and the islands were basically cut off. Thorne gave a thirty-day evacuation order, and anyone who didn’t cooperate . . . well, they were just left to starve. No food or supplies were allowed in, the electricity was shut off, the entire population was plunged right back into the middle ages. Virtually no one had survival skills, and that was when Thorne still had the isotope clouds here so nothing could be grown, so,” she shrugged, “it was total chaos. After a few years, pretty much all the humans had fled, been starved out, or killed in the rioting—”

“Isotope clouds?”

Morgan gave her a look. “Sorry. I forgot you’ve been living in an alternate reality your entire life. Those red clouds you’re so used to seeing lurking over New Vienna?”

Lu nodded.

“They’re manufactured.”

Lu stopped dead in her tracks. “Manufactured!” she repeated in disbelief. The word echoed off the cave walls and faded to silence. “Why? How is that possible?”

Morgan shrugged again, a move heavy with pathos. “Science. Humans engineered powered flight, created nuclear technology, and sent unmanned craft into deep space, you think a few poisonous clouds circling the planet would be a challenge? They’re not exactly stupid, in spite of all their stupidity. As for why, well, population control requires creativity. You can’t achieve world domination and shape general opinion with some leaflets and a few dazzling speeches. You need really heavy-hitting propaganda, the kind people can’t argue with. The more in-your-face and damaging to your opponent, the better. Tangible stuff. Visible stuff.” Her voice soured. “Like clouds the color of blood that change life-supporting beams of sunshine into burning rays of death.”